WHO Director-General Margaret Chan was set to address the agency's
executive board in Geneva as countries took new steps on Wednesday
to try to stop the mosquito-transmitted virus linked to the
dangerous birth defect called microcephaly.
The United States said it will block people who have visited regions
impacted by the virus from donating blood in a bid to fight its
spread.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it is working with other
federal agencies, blood collection establishments and industry
organizations to quickly implement "donor deferral measures for
travelers who have visited affected regions in order to protect the
blood supply in the United States."
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said her country must wage war
against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads the virus, focusing
on getting rid of the insect's breeding grounds. The mosquito
thrives in dense tropical cities, and Rousseff called for the
elimination of stagnant water spots where it lives and reproduces.
U.S. researchers called on the WHO to take swift action. Georgetown
University researchers urged Chan to heed the lessons of Ebola and
called on the WHO to convene a special emergency session of health
and infectious disease experts to consider declaring Zika a serious
health crisis that endangers international public health.
Just convening the meeting would focus attention on funding and
research, they said in an article published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
The WHO's leadership admitted last April to serious missteps in its
handling of the Ebola crisis, which was focused mostly on three West
African countries and killed more than 10,000 people. Some critics
have said the WHO's slow response played a major role in allowing
the epidemic to balloon into the worst Ebola outbreak on record.
AIRLINES OFFER REFUNDS
Airlines are reacting to concern among pregnant women about travel
to affected countries.
Chile-based LATAM Airlines <LAN.SN> <LFL.N>, Latin America's largest
carrier, said it would offer refunds or the opportunity to change
destination to pregnant women and their traveling companions with
international flights booked to Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and other
affected countries.
U.S. airline United Airlines <UAL.N> expanded its program allowing
customers with reserved tickets for travel to impacted regions to
postpone their trips or obtain refunds with no penalty.
A tropical climate, dense cities, poor sanitation and slipshod
construction provided ideal conditions for mosquito breeding grounds
and the spread of the Zika virus in Brazil's northeast, across the
country and to more than 20 others throughout the Americas.
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There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is a close cousin
of dengue and chikungunya and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes.
An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, making
it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been
infected.
Recent models for how the disease is spreading predict "significant
international spread by travelers from Brazil to the rest of the
Americas, Europe, and Asia," Dr. Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease
expert, and Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert, wrote in
the viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. (http://bit.ly/1lSlgXa)
Lucey said only Chan had the authority to convene an emergency
meeting of top experts on the International Health Regulations'
Emergency Committee to consider declaring Zika a "Public Health
Emergency of International Concern."
"That in my view clearly needs to happen, and should have happened
already," Lucey said. Convening the meeting would allow for global
coordination of travel advisories, research priorities and infection
control measures, he said.
There was word of more cases outside the affected region among
travelers who had been to those countries. Portugal said five people
tested positive after recent trips to Brazil.
Four similar cases were reported in New York, as well as single
cases in California, Minnesota, Virginia and Arkansas among people
who had traveled to the affected region.
(Additional reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer in Brazil, Anthony
Esposito, Rosalba O'Brien and Felipe Iturrieta in Santiago and
Jeffrey Dastin in New York, and Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago;
Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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